Other editions of book The Job: An American Novel

This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. The Job is considered an early declaration of the rights of working women. The focus is on the main character, Una Golden, and her desire to establish herself in a legitimate occupation while balancing the eventual need for marriage. The story takes place in the early 1900-1920s and takes Una from a small Pennsylvania town to New York. Forced to work due to family illness, Una shows a talent for the traditional male bastion of commercial real estate and, while valued by her company, she struggles to achieve the same status of her male co-workers. On a parallel track, her quest for traditional romance and love is important but her unique role as a working woman, doing a man's job, makes it tough to find an appropriate suitor.

The Job is an early work by American novelist Sinclair Lewis. It is considered an early declaration of the rights of working women. The focus is on the main character, Una Golden, and her desire to establish herself in a legitimate occupation while balancing the eventual need for marriage. The story takes place in the early 1900-1920s and takes Una from a small Pennsylvania town to New York. Forced to work due to family illness, Una shows a talent for the traditional male bastion of commercial real estate and, while valued by her company, she struggles to achieve the same status of her male coworkers. On a parallel track, her quest for traditional romance and love is important but her unique role as a working woman, doing a man's job, makes it tough to find an appropriate suitor. Una is on track to marry Walter Babson, who appears to be a good man but lacks the excitement of her eventual husband, Edward Schwirtz. He is a salesman with all the charm necessary to win her heart, but the marriage is doomed from the start. Una eventually divorces him, which is also scandalous for the time. As the book closes, Una continues unsuccessfully to salvage both her career and her personal life. The novel was published before Lewis achieved any significant fame and provides insights on working women as well as the unique nature (for the time) of having a woman as the lead character.

This early work by Sinclair Lewis was originally published in 1917 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, USA in 1885. A lonely and socially awkward child, Lewis tried unsuccessfully to run away from home, before entering Yale University in 1903. It was here that, in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, Lewis had his first works - mostly romantic poetry and short sketches - published. In 1920, while living in Washington D.C., Lewis had his first major success with the novel Main Street. Selling around two million copies within a few years, it catapulted Lewis into fame and riches, and he followed it with the critically acclaimed Babbitt (1922), and Arrowsmith (1925) - for which he received, but refused, the Pulitzer Prize.

First published in the year 1917; the present novel 'The Job: An American Novel' by American novelist Sinclair Lewis is considered an early declaration of the rights of working women. The plot focuses on the main character; Una Golden; and her desire to establish herself in a legitimate occupation while balancing the eventual need for marriage. The story takes place in the early 1900-1920s and takes Una from a small Pennsylvania town to New York. Forced to work due to family illness; Una shows a talent for the traditional male bastion of commercial real estate and; while valued by her company; she struggles to achieve the same status of her male coworkers.

Harry Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7th, 1885 in the village of Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Throughout his lonely boyhood, the ungainly Lewis—tall, extremely thin, stricken with acne and somewhat pop-eyed—had trouble gaining friends and pined after various local girls. By 13 he had unsuccessfully ran away from home, in an attempt to become a drummer boy in the Spanish-American War. In late 1902 Lewis left home for a year at Oberlin Academy to qualify for acceptance by Yale University. While at Oberlin, he developed a religious enthusiasm that waxed and waned for much of his remaining teenage years. He entered Yale in 1903 but did not receive his bachelor's degree until 1908, having taken time off to work at Helicon Home Colony, Upton Sinclair's cooperative-living colony in Englewood, New Jersey, and to travel to Panama. Lewis's unprepossessing looks, "fresh" country manners and seemingly self-importance made it difficult for him to win and keep friends but a number of students and professors made the effort, some of whom recognized his promise as a writer. Lewis's earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved location and jobs constantly in an effort to make ends meet whilst writing fiction for publication. In working for newspapers and publishing houses he developed a knack for churning our short popular stories for a variety of magazines. It was a very popular choice for writers whilst engaged on the gestation of the Great American novel. He also earned money by selling plots to Jack London, including one for the latter's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Lewis's first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, a Tom Swift-style pot-boiler that appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham. By 1914 the first of his serious works was published - Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man, followed the following year by The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life, and in 1917, The Job. That same year also saw the publication of another pot-boiler, The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, an expanded version of a serial story that had originally appeared in Woman's Home Companion. Free Air, another refurbished serial story, was published in 1919. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Sinclair Lewis died in Rome on January 10, 1951, aged 65, from advanced alcoholism. His cremated remains were buried in Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

CAPTAIN LEW GOLDEN would have saved any foreign observer a great deal of trouble in studying America. He was an almost perfect type of the petty small-town middle-class lawyer. He lived in Panama, Pennsylvania. He had never been “captain” of anything except the Crescent Volunteer Fire Company, but he owned the title because he collected rents, wrote insurance, and meddled with lawsuits.

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Three years before the civic-minded Carol Kennicott came to life in Main Street, Una Golden was confronting the male dinosaurs of business. Like Carol, the heroine of The Job is one of Sinclair Lewis's most fully realized creations. Originally published in 1917, The Job was his first controversial novel. A "working girl" in New York City, Una Golden—caught in the dilemmas of marriage or career, husband or office, birth control or motherhood—is the prototype of the businesswoman of popular and literary culture.

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was an American novelist and playwright who, in 1930, became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature. His first published book was Hike and the Aeroplane, which appeared in 1912 under the pseudonym Tom Graham, followed by Our Mr Wrenn (1914). Main Street (1920) was his first major commercial success. It was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees. Babbitt (1922) is a satire on American values, its main theme is the power of conformity and the vacuity of American life. Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize again in 1926 - which he rejected - for Arrowsmith (1925), a novel about an idealistic doctor. Elmer Gantry (1927) was the story of an opportunistic evangelist. His last great work was It Can’t Happen Here (1935), a speculative novel about the election of a Fascist President.